The selling-out of Tasmania

22 July 2004 — 10:00am

Ignore the eulogies. Jim Bacon’s legacy is a state ravaged by logging and inappropriate development, writes Richard Flanagan.

Among the many bewildering responses to former Tasmanian premier Jim Bacon's passing, few came more bizarre than that of Albert Langer and his colleagues ("Vale comrade Jim Bacon", on this page on July 2) presenting Bacon as ever "on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors". Unfortunately, history tells a less uplifting tale.

Under Bacon, Tasmania was given away to the rich at the expense of the poor. Typical was how millionaire Greg Farrell's Federal Hotels group became the leading tourism operator in the state, bankrolled by its monopoly on pokie machines. In Victoria and NSW, gaming machine licences are tendered for and millions of dollars paid to state governments, whereas in Tasmania a 15-year monopoly on gaming machines, estimated by Citigroup to be worth at least $130 million, was inexplicably given by the Bacon government to Federal Hotels for nothing.

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An even more disturbing example is the extraordinary rise under Bacon of millionaire John Gay's Gunns Ltd into a billion-dollar monopoly that is now the largest hardwood woodchip exporter in the world.

Too often misrepresented as an environmental story, this a dark tale of corporate greed and government connivance. In spite of the overwhelming majority of Tasmanians wanting the clearfelling of old-growth forests to end, Bacon remained unwavering in his support of old-growth logging and Gunns, the Tasmanian ALP's biggest financial donor.

Under Bacon, clearfelling of globally unique native forest accelerated; and no reform was made of an industry described in evidence to a Senate committee by senior forester Bill Manning as corrupted in its management and prey to a culture of cronyism, bullying and intimidation. Under Bacon, forests disappeared, rivers began drying up, thousands of protected native animals were killed with 1080, and Gunns shares increased in value by more than 700 per cent.

Then there is Bacon's record on democracy. In 1997 Bacon drove the deal with the Liberals under which Tasmania's highly democratic electoral system was fundamentally altered to reduce minority representation, which had resulted in the Greens twice having the balance of power. The result was an enfeebled parliament.

Bacon had no tolerance of dissenting opinions, making no secret of his fury with those who differed from his point of view, no matter how small the difference.

Hailed as a champion of the arts, Bacon famously attacked Tasmanian artists and writers who spoke out against his policies as "cultural fascists" (a term coined by Stalin), signalling clearly to his bureaucracy who was and wasn't going to be part of Bacon's much-trumpeted New Tasmania.

Business consultant Gerard Castles echoes other Tasmanians when he says that Bacon introduced a climate of fear into Tasmania, with Tasmanians knowing that their jobs, careers and businesses would suffer if they spoke out against the government and its close relationship with certain big companies.

But Jim Bacon had one great political insight: that people did not want to hear bad news. In government, Bacon successfully coupled his selective charm to the largest team of spin doctors ever employed by a Tasmanian government. This team alternately wooed and cowed a generally mediocre Tasmanian media, giving out an endless run of good soft stories and working hard and often successfully to quash hard bad stories.

Yet even many of Bacon's most publicised good news stories ended up badly: the appointment of high-profile Richard Butler as Governor has been dogged with criticism; his support of Compass Airlines a failure; Bacon's arts festival has been ravaged by controversy; his purchase of a third interstate ferry is shaping up as a commercial disaster; the benefits of a heavily taxpayer-subsidised gas pipeline are dubious; and Basslink remains controversial.

When wrong-footed by history, Bacon was adept at being identified with the victors he once opposed. Though he later presented himself as a gay rights supporter, in cabinet Bacon opposed gay law reforms being pushed by his own minister, Judy Jackson.

Jim Bacon did have good luck. The economic upswing that coincided with his government, and for which he ceaselessly claimed credit, had far more to do with national and international factors than with his government's policies.

The most undervalued housing market in Australia benefited from a global property boom and low interest rates, while internal Australian tourism, from which Tasmania also benefited, was a post-September 11 phenomenon fuelled by fears of foreign travel and by a low Australian dollar. But the underlying weakness of Tasmania's economic recovery has been recently highlighted by Access Economics, which describes the present growth levels as unsustainable.

Some of the economic changes that did occur under Bacon have had a destructive effect. The housing boom resulted in many poor people being priced out of the market, leading to a homelessness crisis so bad that some families are being housed by welfare agencies in tents.

In the name of tourist development, Bacon unleashed forces that are transforming Tasmania for the worse, with large-scale coastal developments such as a $400 million canal development proposed for the Ralphs Bay conservation area, and the continuing destruction of national parks and Hobart's heritage by inappropriate development that the government did nothing to reign in and everything to encourage. In a typical deal, a CBD property was sold by the government for $100,000 but, within months, apartments were selling off the plan for the site for up to $3 million.

None of this, though, was to interfere with the myth of the great leader being woven around the man whose nickname was the Emperor. Jim Bacon began as a Maoist and ended up a mini-Mao, his funeral replete with oversize imagery, overwrought testimonies and apparatchiki falling over each other to prostrate themselves.

Yet public men must be judged by public actions, and the genuine human sentiment that greets any tragedy ought not be manipulated for political ends, for such is to be untrue to the past and create poisonous myths for the future.

The absurd eulogising of recent weeks, in elevating Jim Bacon to greatness, demeans his far more modest achievements as a competent, if flawed, politician who had both luck and charm but achieved little substantial with either. Jim Bacon was astute enough to ride a resurgent sense of Tasmanian destiny, and fortunate enough to have it presented as his own accomplishment.

But for all the hype, the truth is that after Bacon's premiership Tasmania remains the poorest state in the Commonwealth on almost all social and economic indices; its unique environment is being destroyed at the greatest rate in its history; its celebrated coast and world heritage areas are under attack from inappropriate tourist developments; and its democracy has been left debased and its civil society fearful.

Bacon's legacy was to hand Tasmania's economy and future direction over to a handful of big businesses with too much influence, too much power and too little concern for ordinary Tasmanians.